An amalgam of three of Daniel Handler's children's books under the pen name of Lemony Snicket (Jiminy Cricket! what a monicker!), here impersonated in voice and in silhouette by Jude Law. The setting is an amalgam as well: Charles Addams Gothic and Edward Gorey Edwardiana infiltrated with modern conveniences such …
With, more factually, Bill Murray in the role of Zissou, an over-the-hill, or over-the-wave, oceanographer cum filmmaker, a cut-rate Cousteau: "What happened to me? Did I lose my talent? Am I ever going to be any good again?" Director Wes Anderson, a critical darling and "indie" bellwether for Bottle Rocket, …
Good local color, notwithstanding the warping wide-angle lenses, of an Arab suburb of Paris in the post-9/11 era. The breathy, blond, angelic temptress who moves into the neighborhood with her narrow-minded, broad-hipped guardian would not be part of that palette. Her relationship with the sensitive one in a gang of …
A bubbly blonde who aspires to be Diane Sawyer settles temporarily for being a production assistant on the Kippie Kann Do sleaze-TV show, where, in an excruciating climax, she is shoved in front of the cameras to confront her current boyfriend and his three ex-girlfriends on live television. If you …
French relationship comedy revolving around a self-important novelist and his self-loathing daughter, an overweight failed actress now in training as a classical vocalist. The film reveals itself, and its characters, gradually and organically, unfolding like life. Some of it is perhaps too painful to be funny, yet our recognition of …
Identity quest of a fatherless young Argentinian Jew who helps out in his mother's lingerie shop in a Buenos Aires mall. The quest itself isn't terrifically interesting, but the style -- shaky, shallow telephoto shots, short zooms -- is actively irritating. With Daniel Hendler, Adriana Aizemberg, Silvina Bosco, Sergio Boris; …
Christian Bale, doing a Raging De Niro in reverse, put himself on a Dachau diet and lost in the neighborhood of sixty pounds — and for what? A suspenseless psychological thriller about a factory worker with a distorted reality. The distortions are eventually explained, if anyone's still interested. Director Brad …
Chilean director Andrés Wood deals with his country's Subject A -- Allende -- but he deals with it from the fresh, the naive, the novel perspective of a freckle-faced little redhead (an autobiographical approximation, slightly more aged, of the filmmaker himself) who befriends a lower-class charity case at his exclusive …
The star is Brooke Adams, the director is her actor-husband Tony Shalhoub (who also appears on screen), and the scriptwriter is her sister Lynne Adams (who also appears, also). Sort of a Henry Jaglom-y home movie, or home video rather, and sort of a Christopher Guest-y mockumentary, in which a …
Jonathan Demme's ill-advised remake. The main point to be made about the 1962 original is that, with its historical co-ordinates of McCarthyism, the Cold War, and the Yellow Peril, it dates rather badly, and thus cries out for a major overhaul. But while the John Frankenheimer version — positing a …
Soft-boiled thriller about an alcohol-impaired bodyguard (Denzel Washington) who goes on a revenge rampage after his button-cute charge (Dakota Fanning) gets snatched by a Mexico City kidnapping ring. Long and lugubrious, the movie sets aside a full hour for the guard to bond with the body, dropping his defenses under …
Nature documentary on the reproductive ritual of the emperor penguin, the back-and-forth walk of around seventy miles, the mating dance, the harsh winter, the interminable night, the months of starvation, the high mortality rate. It's a hard life, and fascinating. The cuteness of the creatures makes up for much of …
Banal tale of how a nice, pretty, pregnant, unmarried Colombiana becomes a mule for drug smugglers, flying to New Jersey with a bellyful of plastic-wrapped packets of white powder: Maria Full of Shit. Plenty of squalid details lend credibility, if not exactly freshness. With Catalina Sandino Moreno, Guilied Lopez, Yenny …